Multiple Wireless Access Points Home Network
Multiple Wireless Access Points Home Network
The above is the illustration of my home network. Except for three LAN cables, connecting the ISP modem, VoIP adapter and the two routers, everything else on the network is connected wireless. The ISP's modem is connected to the VoIP adapter, as directed by the VoIP adapter's maker's manual, so that way the VoIP adapter probably can throttle the internet connection to maintain the quality of the phone service. The primary router, the gateway and DHCP server for the home network, is connected to the VoIP adapter. This is one of the wireless access points on the network transmitting only 802.11n 2.4Ghz signals. The primary router is connected to the secondary router through the LAN ports. The secondary router's DHCP is disabled and transmits only 802.11g signals. This acts as another wireless access point to the network. Even though there are two wireless access points (WAPs), the devices connected to either of those WAPs are on the same network segment and can see each other. The secondary router is assigned a static address outside of the DHCP pool. All the devices connected to either of the WAPs have their dynamic addresses assigned by the primary router. So the secondary router acts as a switch to which other 802.11g compliant devices can connect to. All the 802.11n devices are connected wireless to the primary router. By having two WAPs transmitting 802.11n and 802.11g signals, the number of devices connected to each WAP can be reduced thus reducing the bandwidth in each WAP. Rather than running each WAP in mixed wireless mode, each WAP runs a single wireless mode (802.11n or 802.11g), so there is also no impact on throughput performance on the wireless routers. Troubleshooting I had a problem on one of the Windows XP laptops connecting to the 802.11g WAP. It could not communicate with the primary router's DHCP server to get a dynamic address. I tried rebooting the two routers, modem and the laptop to no avail. Then I stumbled upon a weird fix for the problem. I had to login to the web administration interface of the 802.11g WAP. Then the machine got an address assigned and was able to connect to the internet.